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Prices for Thanksgiving travel and feast going up

November 20, 2011 | 10:00
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If you plan on traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday, the cost of your trip is likely to be higher than last year, and the financial pain could strike almost every aspect of your vacation. Even the cost of the turkey dinner.

The average airfare for travel to the top 10 most popular destinations in the U.S. for Nov. 23 to Nov. 27 has jumped 11% over last year, according to an analysis by Orbitz, one of the nation’s busiest travel websites. That means the average round-trip ticket for Thanksgiving rose to $373 from about $340.

Flights to New York for the holiday will rise the most, jumping 20% over last year, with an average round-trip price of $342, according to Orbitz. Round-trip flights to Los Angeles will increase 12% to $429, according to the travel website.

Meanwhile, the average hotel rate for the nation’s top 25 destinations for Nov. 24 to Nov. 28 is expected to rise nearly 5% to $126.35 a night, according to a report by Travelclick, a New York company that provides e-commerce products and services to the hotel industry.

New York has the highest average hotel rates, $205.99 per night, an increase of 3.7% over last year, according to Travelclick. In Los Angeles, the average hotel rate will go up 4.6% to $112.42 a night.

You won’t escape the higher prices by driving: Gas prices reached the highest levels ever in the week prior to Thanksgiving, according to the Automobile Club of Southern California. The average price of self-serve regular gasoline in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area was $3.82 a gallon last week, 66 cents higher than the same time last year.

And with food prices on the rise, the American Farm Bureau Federation is predicting that the cost of a Thanksgiving dinner in the U.S. will rise 13% this year, the biggest increase in two decades.